Breathe
by purrfect
Summary: Prequel to "Time in a Bottle". How Ron and Hermione found each other before Faery found them. One-shot.


_Inspired by, and named for, the Michelle Branch song "Breathe". A small prologue to my fic Time in a Bottle, since we all want to know how Ginny/Harry and Ron/Hermione found each other before Faery found them. This is a glimpse of R/Hr and be prepared for a dirty-minded Hermione ahead. I was a lot like her as a teenager, bookish and quiet but with some crazy, vivid fantasies. And isn't Ron just one to inspire them?_

Hermione Granger could be considered a lot of things. Intelligent, bossy, irritating, bookish, even talented and temperamental were adjectives she'd heard used on occasion. The one thing she wasn't, however, was sure of herself when it came to boys. Well, maybe just one boy: Ron Weasley.

"Stupid prat with his lopsided grin and freckles and tight arse and...argh!" Stomping her foot more like a three year old than the sixteen year old she was, Hermione turned from Ginny's window at the Burrow (which, coincidentally, gave an excellent view of the "stupid prat" shirtless and throwing gnomes out of his mother's garden) to stare morosely down at her schoolbooks, spread neatly atop Ginny's desk. "Studying, Hermione, you're supposed to be studying!"

It was galling the way thoughts of Ron could intrude on her solitude. Certainly she could be found thinking about Harry, too, and the war that crept ever closer, but more often than not it was laughing blue eyes and a slender, cheeky mouth that had her studying sessions turning into daydreams that more often than not turned into quite graphic sexual fantasies. And, really, who could blame her?

Certainly Ron was a handsome boy, with long, lean limbs, broad shoulders, narrow hips and all of that flaming red hair. Hadn't she had to listen for most of the previous year as Lavendar Brown and Parvati Patil cooed over how 'Ronnie' had grown up? That she had wanted to smash both of their faces in much the way she had done to Malfoy not so long ago was a secret she told only to Ginny.

Sighing now, she plopped down into Ginny's desk chair and glanced listlessly around.

Part of the problem was that Hermione was quite sure she was unattractive. If anyone had cared to ask, Hermione would have happily listed her faults. The long, dark brown hair that most would have called "riotously curly and beautifully shiny", Hermione thought of as impossible and bushy. The generous curve to hips and breasts that most young men her age dreamed about on girls, Hermione compared to the long, lean, dancer's body of her friend Ginny and most of the other girls of her acquaintance and called herself fat. That her eyes were wide and an impossibly interesting shade of gold, that her lips were full and pouty without benefit of cosmetics, that her eyelashes were long and dark and thick, that nearly every girl (and some boys) at Hogwarts envied that she had the unwavering friendship of two of the most handsome and valiant blokes to ever grace the school's hallowed halls Hermione dismissed. After all, pretty eyes and a generous mouth had not netted her Ron's romantic attention, so in the long run what good did they do her? (If she had bothered to ask Ron, she would have been told, with something like very male appreciation in his blue eyes, that he was quite enamored of her legs along with all of the rest. Petite she might be, but Ron was pretty sure that one didn't have to have long legs for them to be sexy.) The only thing Hermione ever took credit for, the only thing she thought she had to offer that was even remotely worthwhile and then not to boys particularly but to the world in general was her intelligence.

"And what bloody good does it do for me to be bleeding smart if I can't figure out how to make the sodding great hulk notice me?"

"Well, you might start by letting him hear you curse. That would certainly get his attention!" Ginny laughed and ducked instinctively as Hermione chucked a quite heavy Transfiguration tome in her general direction, namely, the door to her own room. "Come now, Hermione, you know as well as I do that the boy has been staring at you like a dog who's lost his bone. Why don't you just snog him senseless and be done with the whole mess?"

Ginny had to hide her snicker as Hermione blushed a right becoming shade of pink. "He isn't staring at me because he wants to...to...do _that_. He's staring at me because I told him in no uncertain terms that if he was still owling that...that...that _tart_ that I wasn't going to speak to him for the rest of the summer!"

"Hannah is not a tart, Hermione. Just at the end of last term, right before that whole mess with Malfoy's mum and dad, you mentioned to me that you thought Hannah was a very nice girl."

Now, Ginny was a smart witch and knew very well that to say this to Hermione when she was sulking was not the brightest way to go about cheering up her friend. However, a little imp (or really, two, who looked suspiciously like Ginny's twin brothers) often prompted Ginny to give Hermione a hard time over the fact that Ron might fancy shy, sweet Hannah Abbott. He didn't, of course, and wrote to her mostly because Hermione _had_ mentioned that she thought Hannah was a nice girl. Well, and because, let's face it, to see Hermione in a right towering rage over his letters gave him a certain sense of both glee and self-righteousness. After all, if she was still owling that "ugly git, Vicky", why shouldn't he owl Hannah? To Ginny, it was an idiotic tangle the two had made for themselves.

That her _own_ mess, with one Mr. Harry Potter, had yet to be resolved, Ginny refused to acknowledge.

Hermione sighed gustily again, looking forlornly toward the window once more. She could just see the top of Ron's red hair, and just hear him cursing as another gnome sank its sharp teeth into his ankle. "I know she isn't a tart. I'm just jealous, when I promised myself I would never feel any such thing. After all, what right do I have to throw stones when I live in a glass house? I tell Ron to bugger off when he annoys me about Viktor and Viktor and I are just friends."

"Is that stones and houses thing one of those silly Muggle sayings like 'two birds in your hair is worth four in the loo?' "

Ginny sprawled out on her bed and missed Hermione's envying and exasperated look. Once more she was comparing Ginny's coltish body, all long limbs, grace and freckled milky-white skin to her own generous curves, honey-toned skin and bookishness. It didn't dawn on Hermione that Ginny had not always been graceful, or that maybe the younger girl sometimes despaired over her own "flat chest and knobby knees".

"It's 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', Ginny. And if I was any sort of girl at all, I'd know how to catch his attention. But nooooo, I have to be all smart and bookish and not interested in things like Engorging Charms and Straightening Spells. Not that I need to Engorge anything on this body, but still."

Hermione sounded so wistful that Ginny almost wished she, too, were more of a girly type of girl. However, unlike her friend, Ginny had finally found some hard-won peace with her own shortcomings in the girl department. After all, why cast an Engorgement Charm on oneself when you could just prank the boy you liked or beat him at Quidditch? Okay, so maybe that strategy had yet to work with serious, remote Harry, but hey, at least she was trying, right?

"Hermione, the boy fancies the pants off of you. Just...just stop moping and _do_ something about it already!"

"The pants off of me, huh?" Hermione knew her blush had gone from pink to red, but she couldn't help the mental images Ginny's words had conjured. She certainly wouldn't _mind_ if Ron managed to get into her knickers, that was for sure. That Hermione had a fairly dirty mind was something only Ginny was privy to and then only because Hermione had let it slip once just what she'd like to do to Ron on his broom. Ginny had at first been shocked but now she simply found herself constantly intrigued by the many and varied ways in which Hermione thought of shagging her brother.

"Hermione Jane! Are you over there having naughty thoughts about my brother?"

"Maybe." Hermione drew the word out teasingly, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively at Ginny, who didn't know whether she should laugh, be sick or ask what exactly Hermione's surprisingly dirty mind was thinking. Hermione took pity on her and chuckled. "Trust me, you don't want to know what I think about when I see your brother. In fact," she continued, her eyes going slightly unfocused as she licked her lips, "just this morning, he was coming out of the bathroom as I was wandering down the hall. He must have just showered, because his hair was all messy and wet, and water was making these amazing trails down his chest...I had this vision of pressing him up against the wall and following those trails with my tongue."

Now, Hermione had been spending at least a part of the summer at the Burrow since she was eleven. She certainly knew the routine by now and, even though the rickety old house was less five of its formerly nine occupants, little had changed. Ron still took his showers late in the morning, not long after breakfast, when most of the household's members had gone about their daily business. That she had just been "wandering down the hall" as Ron was emerging from one of those showers, clad as always in a threadbare towel that hung low on his hips and afforded a very nice view of his chest, told Ginny that her friend had been very devious this morning. It also occurred to Ginny to wonder if Ron, not as clueless about his best female friend as Hermione thought, had noticed her staring.

Ron _had_ noticed. Something in her expression as she watched his arm and chest muscles bunch and flex as he rubbed a towel through his wet hair, something vaguely hungry and predatory that had her pupils expanding and her already much-too-inviting mouth parting had almost sent him stumbling right back into the shower, this time for a cold drench. However, as she mumbled something inane and then fled, her hips swinging invitingly, Ron had leaned negligently against the wall and stared after her with a thoughtful look about him. He had noticed that look of Hermione's on a couple of the young women of Hogwarts over the past year, as his Keeper abilities had improved right along with his body, and had finally tested the waters with a seventh year Hufflepuff he caught staring at him, just to see exactly what it was that look meant. To his surprise and, later, shame, she had immediately responded to his advances. While it had never gone farther than a couple of kisses and some rather fumbling caresses in a broom closet, Ron had been very careful since to stay away from women and girls with _that look_. Young and sometimes foolish he might be, but his heart and, sadly, libido, were forever given over to one Hermione Granger. To come across _her_ staring at him that way had him seriously considering the advice Fred had given him not so long ago.

"The girl is in love with you already, Ron! If you'd just give her a little hint that you felt the same, she'd be shagging you anytime you liked!"

Ron had grunted a noncommittal response and brushed off his brother's advice. So maybe Hermione fancied herself in love with him, which he highly doubted would last much past his blundering attempts to love her back. Too, what kind of friend would he be, if he let her get tangled up with someone like him? She was the brightest witch Hogwarts had seen in a long time and not exactly ugly, either. What right did he, Quidditch captain and Head Boy he would be going into their seventh year notwithstanding, have to ask her to give him a chance? It was better if he just let her supposed infatuation die a natural death, as it was bound to do, and resign himself to forever being her best friend. However, if she was giving him looks like _that_... Well, he was as hot-blooded as the next almost-seventeen-year-old boy. Besides, if she were having _those_ sorts of urges, what better person to initiate her than her best friend?

He was now sweating and cursing in the heat of his mother's gnome-filled garden to banish such self-serving and, in the long-run self-defeating, thoughts from his brain. He could, however, hear every word of the conversation between his best friend and his sister and it wasn't helping his resolve to keep his hands off of Hermione.

"Hermione, you have the dirtiest mind of any girl I've ever met! You...you really thought about...about..." Ginny just couldn't finish the sentence, though her brain was gleefully putting her in Hermione's place and supplying a mouth-watering mental image of Harry's bare chest in place of her brother's. The image had her sitting up and pulling her knees to her chest to hide the trembling of her limbs.

Ron found himself drifting closer to the window, his ears tuned to Hermione's response. She was jealous of Hannah? She and the hated Crum were just friends? _She had a dirty mind?_ This was a conversation he liked more and more!

"I can't help it! I swear I already know he tastes like chocolate frogs and cinnamon." Hermione groaned and buried her hot face in her hands, before peeking out at Ginny. "I only have these thoughts about Ron. I've tried to replace him in my fantasies and I just can't! What's _wrong_ with me?"

"You know very well. You're in love with my git of a brother."

"I mean, besides that. Ginny, he wouldn't look at me twice like that. I'm just not attractive like the other girls. Why would Ron want to...to...put his hands on me when...when....argh!"

Now at this point Ron almost gave himself away. Hermione didn't think she was sexy? This was a revelation, for, as often as he apparently starred in her fantasies, she starred in his. Ron had spent many hours, the heavy drapes on his Hogwarts bed closed tightly, dreaming about what Hermione's skin felt like under his hands, how her pouty mouth tasted, the little sounds she would make when he kissed that spot behind her ear where she tucked her hair, even about what she looked like naked. Not attractive? Fuck, he'd been itching to get his hands on her ever since he'd figured out that sex was more fun with two!

"Did you just hear something?"

"Bloody buggering hell, must have said that last bit out loud," Ron muttered to himself, stepping quickly under the eave of Ginny's window as Hermione's face appeared over it, scanning the garden.

"Hermione, it was probably just one of the gnomes Ron tossed sneaking back in."

"Hmmmm. Maybe it was. Anyway, I think we should change the subject. Ron does not find me attractive so I must content myself with my full and overactive fantasy life." Hermione's voice held a hint of finality and some despair that had Ron's heart clenching. "Come on, let's go see what your mum left for lunch. You know, she and your dad have been leaving us alone a lot this summer while they go off doing Order business. That seems odd, huh, especially with that trouble Harry had at the Dursleys..."

Ron stood under his sister's window for a long time after he heard her door shut.

Harry was scheduled to arrive any day; he'd told Ron in a recent letter that 'the trouble at the Dursleys', which consisted of a rather nasty Death Eater attack right on Privet Drive that Harry was pretty sure he'd stopped with some sort of wandless magic, had convinced Dumbledore that he was no longer really safe with his relatives. It had been decided that Harry was better off where he wished to be, which was at the Burrow. Now, Ron wanted to see his best mate. However, he was well aware that if he were ever going to make any sort of move in Hermione's direction, his best chance for success would be _before_ Harry arrived. Hearing her admit that she was in love with him, that she thought about them doing...well..._things_, Ron was convinced it was time to act. Okay, so maybe he would regret taking the risk but, if it made Hermione realize she was sexy and desirable, what in the long run had he lost but a little dignity?

Mind made up, Ron went to go take another shower, a cold one, and plan his attack.

* * *

Poor, clueless Hermione was not quite sure what to think when Ron mentioned after dinner that the nearby town of Ottery St. Catchpole had a Muggle cinema. When he asked if she might like to go with him to see a movie (without mispronouncing any of the Muggle words or blushing), she nearly spilled her lemonade all over the front of her shirt. When he further mentioned that Ginny was working on something so it would just be the two of them, Hermione was positive that he was taking a fever. Had he...had he just asked her out on a date? Somehow, she found herself agreeing to accompany him and saying something mortifyingly girly like she needed to change her clothes.

Ron unashamedly watched Hermione's nice bum swish back and forth, back and forth, as she climbed the stairs to go freshen up. Before he had quite thought it through, he blurted, "Hermione, do you own a skirt? I mean, other than the ones from your uniform?"

Hermione turned slowly back to face him, her face a study in contrasts: her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, her brow furrowed in confusion and a bit of temper was sparking in her eyes. It was a heady combination for Ron, since it was the expression she most often wore when they had a row. Since Ron never found Hermione more sexy than when they were having a flaming row, it was a dangerous situation he found himself in. Parts of his body that he had long ago discovered he had to rein in tightly around beautiful Hermione suddenly had a mind of their own once more, and he found his trousers becoming decidedly uncomfortable. "Yes, Ron, I own a skirt. Why?"

"Because I thought it might be nice to see you wear one. You have very nice legs."

"I...I have...you think...my legs...Ronald Weasley, are you making fun of me?"

Yes, her expression was _very_ like the one she wore when they rowed and Ron felt heat prickle across his skin, adding to his agitation. He allowed a smirk to curl his upper lip as he stepped up a stair, bringing his head level with Hermione's, who stood up several stairs. "I would never stoop so low, Ms. Granger. You have very nice legs. I've even heard that wanker Finnegan mention it." Of course, that "wanker" had been stupid enough to say it within earshot of Ron; Seamus now had nightmares about territorial redheads and the infamous Bat-Bogey Hex, a favorite among the Weasleys.

"You're full of shite, Weasley." She said it mostly because she really was positive he was funning her and it pissed her off. However, when his pupils expanded in surprise and his smirk turned into a full-fledged grin, Hermione wondered if she hadn't also said it to get a rise out of him. The thought of the sort of rise she'd _like_ to get out of him had her cheeks, and other, more private places, heating up once more.

"Why, Hermione, I do believe you just said a swear word. Whatever is the world coming to?" Were they flirting? Was this flirting? Ron realized that she had that look in her eye again, the one that meant she was thinking about more than just skirts and movies and snogging. Fascinated despite himself, he reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb brushing lightly over her lower lip.

She gasped softly, eyes going wide and startled at the intense way he was watching her. The already impossible blue of his eyes had darkened to smoky cobalt and she shivered when his eyes dropped to her mouth, his thumb scraping back and forth, back and forth on her sensitive skin, a hypnotizing, arousing rhythm. Feeling her heart thumping madly in her chest, Hermione took a slow, even breath, and then jumped when he groaned, his eyes falling to her chest. "Merlin, Hermione, what are you trying to do to me?"

"Wh-what do you mean?" She sounded as scatter-witted as she felt, not sure what exactly he meant until his eyes slid back up to hers. It was there, in his eyes, in the way he leaned forward just a bit more, his breath feathering across her cheek, in the soft sound he coaxed from her as his thumb dipped into the wetness just inside her mouth. He desired her, desperately, wildly, as much as she desired him. Hermione's confidence soared, her arms sliding around Ron's neck as she leaned in and brushed a featherlight kiss along his jaw. "I've just been waiting, Ron. Do you think you're ready?"

He actually shuddered, she felt it under her palms, and then he said, softly, "Hermione. I had convinced myself I only wanted you to realize you were beautiful and desirable. Now...now, I'm not sure I can bear it if you don't...if this isn't more than teenage hormones."

He watched as she moved back a little, her golden eyes soft and faintly amused. His pulse was still racing wildly out of control, but it was more than passion, more than need. She was everything and he needed her to truly understand that, for all of his earlier self-deception, he was doing this because his heart was wildly, hopelessly tangled up with hers. "Of course it's partly hormones, because you're a right handsome bloke and I'm a fairly normal young woman." He had already started to back away from her, to drop his hands and turn away to hide the pain, when her hands fisted in the hair at the nape of his neck and she said firmly, "However, if this wasn't more than just sex, I would have pressed myself against you in the hallway this morning and damned the consequences. Ron. Look at me."

He did and had to take a quick, hard breath. The hot, hungry look in her eyes, the one he'd seen on other girls, was there, but it was tempered by something much softer, much sweeter, much more enduring. He reached out and hauled her close, burying his face in her neck, murmuring her name. She wrapped arms and legs around him, holding him tight, and whispered, "Forever, Ron."

"Forever, Hermione."

Fate, watching at the window, chuckled, a not unpleasant sound, and turned to find Harry. Her work here, after all, was not quite finished.


End file.
